Sunday, April 27, 2008

Tim Russert and tin ears on Meet The Press

You know many times I wonder why any business organization would pay the chattering class any money for their "opinions." They say the craziest things.

Here are some perfect examples.

Link to transcript

MR. RUSSERT: David, we had in the debate--and Andrea--Hillary Clinton jumping on Barack Obama about William Ayers, the Weatherman, is one of the questions, and Jeremiah Wright. John McCain has now picked up on the William Ayers situation. Tom Hayden, the former radical from the '60s, has now written a piece which is basically saying, "Time out." And he writes this, "Hillary is blind to her own roots in the sixties. ... She was in Chicago for three nights during the 1968 street confrontations. ... She was involved in the New Haven defense of Bobby Seale during his murder trial in 1970, as the lead scheduler of student monitors.

"Most significantly in terms of her recent attacks on Barack, after Yale law school, Hillary went to work for the left-wing Bay Area law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, which specialized in Black Panthers and West Coast labor leaders prosecuted for being communists. Two of the firm's partners, according to Treuhaft, were communists and two others `tolerated communists.'

"All these were honorable words and associations in my mind, but doesn't she see how the Hillary of today would accuse the Hillary of the sixties of associating with black revolutionaries who fought gun battles with police officers, and defending pro-communist lawyers who backed communists? Doesn't the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whom Hillary attacks today, represent the very essence of the black radicals Hillary was associating with in those days?"

Are we going to have a debate in November about past associations and pastors, or we going to have a debate about the war, health care and economy?


Say what??

First of all the Repubs will be happy to call Hillary to account, when it is time.

Secondly, Hussein's problems with Willam Ayers are not "past" associations. It appears that Hillary's is.

Finally, yes. Yes indeedy. Associations, past for Hillary and present for Hussein count.

MR. RICHARD WOLFFE: Well, there's no question that Barack Obama has a deficit when it comes to white working-class voters. It's more than the issue of whether he's elitist, just as ridiculous as that argument is. He's the son of a single mother,


The problem with that song, Dear Richard, is that his grandmother, who Hussein credits with raising him, was a Vice President in the largest bank in Hawaii. So that dog won't hunt. Heck, it won't even get off the porch.

MR. BILL MOYERS: Barack Obama was a skeptic when it came to religion. He sought you out because he knew you knew about the community. You led him to the faith. You baptized him, you performed his wedding ceremony, you baptized his two children. You were, for 20 years, his spiritual counselor. He has said that. And yet he, in that speech at Philadelphia, had to say some hard things about you. How did it go down with you when you heard Barack Obama say those things?

REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT: It, it went down very simply. He's a politician; I'm a pastor. We speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a politician. I say what I have to say as a pastor. Those are two different worlds. I do what I do; he does what politicians do. So that--what happened in Philadelphia, where he had to respond to the sound bites, he responded as a politician.


Now we have a preacher condoning improper behavior. That Wright's moral base. No wonder he could yell, "God damn America!" and not see how disgusting that is.

Gwen Ifill: It also obscures a, a more fundamental problem which is coming up in this campaign, we are all looking for ways, in our way, to talk about race in the campaign. But what the, the numbers have shown us, the exit polls have shown us in the last week is that what we don't want to talk about is racism, which is, I think, a, a, a real issue. The people who said they--that race mattered to them, a lot of them voted for Hillary Clinton. I'm not calling the voters racists, but I think, at some point, we have to get back to a word that we're very scared of using in our society, which is the reason why people vote against someone because of their race is not a positive reason, it's a negative, and racism is a negative quality. We have to find some way to embrace talking about that in our coverage, and we're kind of nervous about that.


That is very kind of Ms. Ifill. But perhaps she should examine the definition of racism and explain why Hussein is getting 90% plus of the black vote. Is it racism??

rac·ism
–noun 1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.



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